1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to computer networks and more particularly to using quality-of-service (Q-o-S) and other network resource information to facilitate routing of service requests in a client-server network such as the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
The World Wide Web is the Internet's multimedia information retrieval system. In the Web environment, client machines effect transactions to Web servers using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is a known application protocol providing users access to files (e.g., text, graphics, images, sound, video, etc.) using a standard page description language known as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML provides basic document formatting and allows the developer to specify "links" to other servers and files. In the Internet paradigm, a network path to a server is identified by a so-called Uniform Resource Locator (URL) having a special syntax for defining a network connection. Use of an HTML-compatible browser (e.g., Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer) at a client machine involves specification of a link via the URL. In response, the client makes a request to the server (sometimes referred to as a "Web site") identified in the link and, in return, receives in return a document or other object formatted according to HTML.
Web site operators desire to monitor the quality-of-service they provide to Web clients in order to attempt to rectify, to the extent practicable, any identifiable service problems. To this end, various Q-o-S monitoring solutions have been proposed and some have been implemented, with mixed results. One approach is to place dedicated monitors or machines at a selected plurality (e.g., 30-40) Internet Service Provider (ISP) or other locations throughout the Internet and to collect various types of usage statistics that are then sold or distributed back to Web site operators interested in such information. The information measured by these monitors, however, may only represent only a small fraction of the total paths used to connect to any given large server. In addition, such monitors are useless for resolving questions about the quality-of-service (e.g., server response times) for requests issued by way of an ISP that is not connected to the set of monitors.
Quality-of-service data is also of interest to Internet Service Providers. Typically, a given Web client may access the Internet through use of a dialup (POTS) connection to an ISP facility. The ISP normally includes a gateway that allows users to send and receive IP packets to and from the Internet, and this gateway also provides basic routing functionality. Current ISP gateways, however, do not have the capability of capturing, managing and/or using quality-of-service and other dynamically-collected network resource information to facilitate routing of service requests.
This is the problem addressed by the present invention.